Luna Lovegood

Luna "Loony" Lovegood (born c. 1981) is a fictional character from the Harry Potter series. She is described as looking like an embodiment of dottiness, with her wand tucked behind her ear for safekeeping and a necklace made of butterbeer corks. Luna's father is the editor of The Quibbler, where he prints "important stories he thinks the public needs to know." The stories are often ridiculously untrue and silly; however, Luna believes them and she thus has many odd beliefs. Luna defends her beliefs, her father and his magazine against insults from other characters, most notably Hermione Granger.

J. K. Rowling says Luna is sort of the "anti-Hermione," as Luna believes things on faith alone and Hermione grounds her beliefs on facts and logic. Hermione repeatedly tries to convince Luna that her beliefs are nonsense, to no avail. Luna sees Hermione as being narrow-minded and Hermione sees Luna as being very gullible. Hermione seems to have realised that Luna would not falter in her beliefs by the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Despite Luna's dottiness, she can be very perceptive about human nature, and Harry often notes her knack for perceptive blunt honesty.

Luna is in Ravenclaw and Ginny Weasley's year, her fourth in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and must consequently have entered Hogwarts during the events of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Luna is first introduced on the Hogwarts Express when there is no other compartment for Harry, Ginny and Neville to sit in; Ginny convinces them to sit in that compartment.

Luna has straggly, waist-length dirty blond hair and is described as having a dazed look on her face. Her eyes are described as "silvery" and "misty," which suggests they may be pale grey. They are also described as "protuberant," which adds to the peculiarity of her appearance. A common speculation is that the largeness of her eyes is not merely a comedic exaggeration, but as in many classical artworks, is symbolic of a keen sense of awareness, insight, or profound spirituality.

She is called "Loony Lovegood" behind her back, although she is aware of this and doesn't seem to mind. Some of her classmates regularly steal her possessions and hide them for the fun of it. When she tells Harry Potter this in an offhanded conversation, she unintentionally wins his sympathy. Harry offers to help her find her lost things, but she refuses. It is interesting that while Luna does not care about her own image, she does care what people think of her father's magazine. Luna believes Harry's story about his escape from Lord Voldemort, and defends it in front of a group of sceptical students (even though Hermione criticizes her attitude as being too open-minded, if not gullible).

During Luna's fourth year she joins Dumbledore's Army (The D.A.), and later participates in the desperate struggle for survival that ensues when Harry leads her, Hermione, Ginny, Ron and Neville into the Department of Mysteries, where they are ambushed by numerous Death Eaters.

While in the Department of Mysteries, Luna claims to be able to hear voices behind a mysterious veil (referred to in some fanfictions as the "Veil of Death" or the "Black Veil", though it is never named in the book itself) in the Death Chamber. Harry could also hear these voices and Luna appears to believe that dead people, including her mother and Sirius Black, reside behind the veil.

When she explains this to Harry, who is having trouble getting over Sirius's death, he does not know what to make of it -- another unusual belief of Luna's, or perhaps a comforting metaphor? It is worth noting that Harry feels like discussing Sirius' death with Luna, when he does not feel comfortable talking about it with anyone else. Many fans believe this is because they share horrible tragedies in their past and that they have both been considered to be mentally unbalanced by others and thus can relate to each other.

Despite her eccentricity, Luna seems to be perfectly sane, and her membership in Ravenclaw house suggests that she is also quite intelligent. Her main abnormal quality of absent-mindedness, helped by her strange beliefs and unusual attire, is enough to give her the reputation of being mentally unbalanced.

Not as much is known about Luna's fifth year. At the begining of the school year Luna shares a compartment with Harry and Neville Longbottom during the ride on the Hogwarts Express.

Later in the year, Luna is invited by Harry to attend Professor Slughorn's Christmas party on an impulse. For Slughorn's party, she removes her usual accessories (such as her radish earrings and bottle-cork necklace) and dresses in elegant silver robes, in which Harry notes that she looks quite nice. During this particular scene, she also says that when she was at the meetings, she felt like she had friends. When she receives the invitation to attend, she becomes uncharacteristically excited and happy. During the year Professor McGonagall appoints Luna as Lee Jordan's temporary replacement as Quidditch announcer for the school. While on duty, however, she absent-mindedly gets distracted from the game and begins to discuss other topics with the crowd, such as the clouds, and that certain players are "nice."

When the Death Eaters attack Hogwarts at the end of book six, Luna is at hand to help defend the students. Shortly after the battle, she attends Dumbledore's funeral with Neville. There, she is seen helping Neville into his chair (this does not imply a future romantic relationship, as J.K. Rowling has confirmed Neville and Luna will not become a couple). At the funeral, Harry notes that she and Neville were the only two members of the D.A. (besides Ron, Hermione, and Ginny) to have answered the call to help fight from the coins used the previous year. He notes that this is probably due to the fact that these two in particular were the most lonely, and probably checked the coins frequently.

The name "Luna" is Latin for moon. This obviously refers to Luna's absent-mindedness and clearly unconventional patterns of thought, since in ancient times the moon was thought to induce insanity in people (hence the word "lunatic," which is, unsurprisingly, the source of Luna's nickname, "Loony"). In western folklore, the moon also represents intuition and insight. Luna standing for the moon also implies that she is light of heart and good of heart, like the moon goddes Diana (Artemis in Greece.)

The origin of the surname "Lovegood" is more ambiguous. Obviously, it combines the English words "love" and "good", both of which have very positive connotations (as in "a fight between good and evil, love and hate.") This could refer to her kind character, or be simply an idiosyncrasy of the author. Her last name could also be a reference to Elliot Lovegood Grant Watson, who wrote numerous books highlighting the insufficiencies of Darwinism after he was raised by a mother who adored Darwin. It could, therefore, be a reference to how The Quibbler attacks widely accepted beliefs.